How the Jackal Got Back His Coat
by tepid sponge bath
Summary: The unthinkable has happened: Akabane Kuroudo's black coat has gone missing. And when something needs getting back, who you gonna call?
1. Wherein a Coat is Found to Be Missing

**Disclaimer**: I don't own _Get Backers_ in any shape or form. And I do not profit from this in any way that involves currency. And I have to admit that the title is a rip off of a story of Neil Gaiman's.

**Part 1 – Wherein a Coat is Found to Be Missing**

It was as much a trademark as his black hat. Maybe even more so, seeing as the hat could come off his head tipped or taken off in greeting, while the coat – that black, black coat, long and heavy enough to be impractical for anyone else who would attempt to move like the good doctor – the coat was always there. There were precious few people who could imagine Akabane Kuroudo going about his business without his coat. The idea of a coat-less Jackal wouldn't even begin to occur to most.

There were three of them. Akabane was a practical man, and clothes got dirty on a job, and while he would have liked to have had a single favorite coat, he had found that it was better to transfer affection to another item of clothing while one was spending some quality time at the dry cleaner's. So there it was: three coats, all expensively, immaculately tailored, were cycled with one in active duty, one being cleaned, and one kept in the closet for just in case.

The week had been busy, and slightly more difficult than Jackal had reckoned it would be (which was a good thing – he had been infinitely amused, and that was saying something). And between one thing and the next, he had found himself using the emergency coat, and, later on, needing to have even the emergency coat cleaned. (The other coat, the one he wore first had, in a series of unfortunate events, been rendered unwearable, except perhaps by the kind of punk musician who went in for things that were artfully, viciously ripped and torn.) It was fortunate that last week's coat was due to be picked up from the cleaner's.

Akabane walked to the dry cleaning establishment from his apartment. He walked most everywhere, finding it inconvenient to drive, or more precisely to be semi-permanently tied to a vehicle (witness Midou Ban's long-term love affair with his Subaru that resulted in a string of inconvenient parking tickets). Besides, he had an easy job of walking up and down urban sidewalks – people tended to keep out of his way, often re-creating the parting of the Red Sea in miniature as the Transporter swept past.

The bell attached to the door tinkled gently as Jackal entered the little shop. It smelled very clean, of detergent and fabric softener, and pleasantly so. Akabane found the scent reassuring, comforting even, as it came with the promise of taking home a nice, freshly-laundered coat. Sometimes it was the little things that made life truly pleasant, even if they did not come with a little blood spatter.

The shop's owner, drawn by the bell, came out of the back room of the establishment and greeted the Transporter with a smile and a polite, sincere 'good afternoon.' Akabane was one of his regular customers, and, what was more, made it a point reward good service with handsome tips.

"It's been ready since yesterday, Akabane-san," he said. "And I took the liberty of redoing a bit of stitching on the hem."

Doctor Jackal's mouth curved into a small, pleased smile. He thanked the man, and waited patiently as he went to fetch the coat from the rack of clean things.

And then something went amiss. Akabane saw it in the way the man's face fell, the increasing panic in the way he flicked through the hangers. His eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"I trust that there is nothing wrong?" asked the Transporter in tones that clearly indicated that there had _better _not be.

The proprietor turned to him, helpless and crestfallen. "Your coat, Akabane-san – I can't – It's not here."

**End of Part 1**


	2. Involving a Bottle of Bleach

**Disclaimer**: I don't own _Get Backers_ in any shape or form. And I do not profit from this in any way that involves currency. And I have to admit that the title is a rip off of a story of Neil Gaiman's.

**Part 2 – Involving a Bottle of Bleach**

The proprietor turned to him, helpless and crestfallen. "Your coat, Akabane-san – I can't – It's not here."

The man went on to say that he didn't understand how it had happened, that he had put it on the rack himself, that he was more than willing to replace the coat – his spiel was cut short by a stream of scalpels shooting past his ear.

"_I'm so sorry, Akabane-san!_" He dropped to the floor in what was either an abject bow of apology or an inelegant attempt to avoid any more pointed objects.

"I expected better of your establishment," said Akabane quietly. "Misplacing your customer's clothes – most unprofessional. Needless to say, I am very displeased." Quite suddenly, he was looming over the man, gazing malevolently at him through the slit in the brim of his hat. "Very displeased," he repeated. "_And I needed my coat._"

It was difficult to understand precisely what happened next. Jackal raised a fist bristling with scalpels to wreak bloody justice on the laundryman – he hadn't made up his mind whether or not he was actually going to kill him. (He ordinarily _did_ do a very good job of cleaning his clothes, and the Transporter was a practical man who did not want to take the trouble to find a new cleaners' when this one was all right already. _But he had lost his coat_. But who else would put in those oh-so-lovely smelling drying sheets? _Blast_.)

There was a shelf of laundry-related chemicals and substances on the wall near Jackal. In an uncharacteristic display of miscalculation – brought about, perhaps, by his hesitation to lose a good laundry service – the scalpels in Jackal's fist sliced messily through the shelf.

There was a bottle of bleach (lemon-scented) on the shelf, which someone had left only loosely capped. And it teetered and tottered on the broken shelf, and, finally, by some freak accident of physics, tipped over and poured its contents over the black-clad Transporter.

**End of Part 2**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: I don't own _Get Backers_ in any shape or form. And I do not profit from this in any way that involves currency. And I have to admit that the title is a rip off of a story of Neil Gaiman's.

**Part 3 – Wherein the Hat is Unhappy with Certain Choices**

The coat. The coat was. The magnificent, long black coat. It was covered in blotchy, discolored patches of bleach stains. They spread across the shoulders, dribbled down the lapels, and liberally dotted the coat so that it looked like a diseased Dalmatian in negative.

All in all, it was ruined.

The hat, however, had managed to escape unscathed. A box of dryer sheets had knocked it off before the bleach hit. It really was the little things: there was only one hat, with much more sentimental value to it, and it would have been so much more difficult to replace than the coat.

But the coat.

Akabane had been deeply embarrassed. He had spent a full minute simply standing in shock and disbelief that such a _klutzy_ mishap could happen to _him_. And he had had to let the laundryman get away with just a very bad scare. Jackal just hadn't the heart to call down a vengeful Bloody Rain after that. Especially not since the man had _not_ taken advantage of the situation to run away, but had rather saved the hat from an advancing puddle of bleach, helped Akabane remove the coat while making sure that no bodily damage had been done, and had even called a taxi to take the Transporter home. All the while promising to replace _both_ coats (and bobbing up and down like a bowl of unsettled jelly, but you had to give the man some leeway).

And so Akabane sat stiffly in the back of the taxi, the hat on the seat next to him, and the coat folded over on his lap. The situation was unacceptable. He supposed that he could stand losing face at the dry cleaner's. Only one person had seen it happen, and he supposed that he could ensure that _nobody else would ever find out_ with a simple, well-worded phone call. But the coat. The lack of a coat. He _tried _not to imagine what his colleagues would say (or think because if they valued their lives they wouldn't say anything about it out loud where he could hear it) and failed. It wouldn't matter if he had decided on a wardrobe change, he supposed, but being coatless through a series of ridiculous accidents…

Even when he was still a practicing doctor, he had had a coat, albeit one that was white (and thus wouldn't have been prone to the ravages of bleach).

He supposed that he must still have that coat around somewhere. It was the next best thing. And it would probably even work with the hat.

He _did _still have his doctor's coat. It had taken some searching, but it was there, folded neatly in a box in the inner recesses of his closet. Akabane pulled it on and inspected his reflection critically. There was something sentimental about wearing it again after so long, a relic of the days when he had been committed to saving lives rather than taking them. It didn't even look half bad – it hung a little looser than it had during his medical days, but that was all right.

But it wasn't the _same_. Jackal felt like he had stepped into someone else's skin, and his body was just about to launch a massive immune response in protest. And the hat, judging by the look of things, wasn't too happy either. It looked like it missed the black coat, drooping disconsolately at being paired with another garment.

"You'll have to make do," Jackal told it, and himself. "You have no _choice_."

He could have sworn that the hat sagged a little bit more at that.

Well, he actually did have a choice. He could cancel all his engagements until his new coats were delivered (he had already called his tailor's, telling them to send the bill to the dry cleaner), and sit around the house in a dressing gown for four weeks.

But.

It grated him to the depths of his soul to do something so unprofessional as to leave off work because of a disaster in the wardrobe department. And the mere thought of four weeks of doing nothing was enough to bestir the beginnings of cabin fever. He had to get his coat back, and he had to have it _now_.

A smile crept across his lips at the thought of 'getting back' his coat. Akabane was surprised that he hadn't thought of it sooner. His coat needed retrieving. And when something needed retrieving, who better to call on than Shinjuku's finest?

The Get Backers could expect another client very, very soon.

**End of Part 3**


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer**: I don't own _Get Backers_ in any shape or form. And I do not profit from this in any way that involves currency. And I have to admit that the title is a rip off of a story of Neil Gaiman's. And I think I owe Ray Parker Jr. an apology for sort of using the _Ghost Busters _theme.

**Part 4 – Wherein A Song is Sung; Retrievers are Hired; and Foul Play (when accompanied by Illegal Parking) Does Not Pay**

"No way," said Ban emphatically, slamming his fist down on Paul's clean countertop. "No _fucking_ way. Over my cold, dead body and then only if you get an exorcist because I swear I will come back to _haunt _you if you even _try_!"

If this outburst had occurred earlier in Natsumi's career as a waitress at the Honky Tonk, she might have burst into tears. But she now considered herself a veteran when it came to Midou Ban's moods. "I was only trying to help," she said, more or less evenly.

"Yeah, Ban-chan!" This was Ginji, who was latched to his coffee cup in the same way that some hospital patients are latched to ventilators. "And I think it'd be cute."

"_Cute? _Who the hell cares about _cute_? We're _retrievers_, lightning punk, not mascots for hire at kids' birthdays. People want 'em lean, mean, and no-nonsense. How in the nine circles of Hell are we going to get work by being _cute_?"

"You made me wear a traffic cone on my head once," said Ginji, in a very small voice. "When we were looking for work on the sidewalk before the yakuza guys showed up…"

"That was to attract attention, nitwit, not to look cute!"

"And we don't have work anyway, shouldn't we just try…?"

"I said there is no way in freaking Hell that I am going to stand on a public street and sing that ridiculous song! I have my dignity!"

"You have no dignity," interjected Paul from behind his newspaper. "What you do have is a tab as long as my arm, and no way to pay it. Why don't you give it a shot? You could at least liven up the place instead of griping."

"And Natsumi-chan treated us to the coffee!"

The waitress in question nodded. "Can't you sing, Ban?"

"I can sing damn well if I want to!"

"It's a simple enough tune, and you don't even need to get it all right - _If there's something lost, in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Get Backers!" _sang Natusmi brightly, snapping her fingers to the tune. "_If you need it back, and it's gone for good – who you gonna call_?"

"Get Backers!" answered Ginji, twirling on his stool.

Ban put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. "I can't bear this, I really just can't."

"What's not to be borne, Midou-kun?" asked a sudden smooth voice from the door. "I found it amusing enough. A little maudlin, perhaps, but the tune is familiar enough to make for good advertising."

Ginji froze in mid-swivel. The silhouette in the doorway was familiar even if there was something off about it today. "A-a-aaaaakabane-san!"

"Fuck off, Jackal," spat Ban, determinedly refusing to look in the direction of the Transporter. "Nobody asked for your opinion."

"You will find that my opinion will become very important in a moment. And that you will no longer need to advertise. I am here to give you a job, Get Backers."

"…" came a steady mantra from somewhere near the floor. Ginji was in hiding.

"Heh." Ban curled his mouth into a wry grin. "I'm sorry, Jackal, but your humanity is something that even we can't retrieve."

"My 'humanity' as you call it is none of your concern. What I need you to retrieve is something much more mundane. As pros shouldn't you hear your clients out before judging them on the basis of personal prejudice?"

"Don't tell us how to do our job, and we won't tell you how to do yours." Ban took a swig of coffee before finally turning to face Akabane Kuroudo. The coffee was promptly snorted out. "What the _hell_ are you wearing?"

"Obviously something other than my normal attire," answered Jackal in an annoyed hiss.

Paul put down his paper and gave the Transporter a critical look. "I'd have left off the hat if I were you."

"Yeah, Akabane-san," echoed Natsumi. "It doesn't…look…right…" She tilted her head as she regarded him, and then remembered who she was talking to. "Coffee, Akabane-san?"

"No, thank you." The Transporter leveled a look at Ban who wasn't even trying to pretend to not be on the verge of laughter. "And I will thank _you _to refrain from comment. Shouldn't you inviting me to talk? Somewhere away from the windows, please."

Ginji and Ban found it more than a little hard to focus as Akabane Kuroudo outlined what he needed from them, on negotiating with him about the terms and conditions for the retrieval of his coat. They were very preoccupied with the memory of yesterday afternoon, when they had happened to look through the window of a laundry shop in the course of their search for work. Had happened to see the proprietor hanging up a coat that looked very familiar. Had happened to enter the shop. Had happened to use the Evil Eye to make the proprietor become occupied with a scantily clad and possibly underage female customer (in Ban's case). Had happened to pinch the coat from the rack and run like mad for the exit (in Ginji's case). Ginji was wondering why he had gone along with Ban's obviously madcap idea. Ban (though he would never admit it) was wondering why he had thought that it was a good idea in the first place.

He did, however, retain enough business sense to haggle for an exorbitant fee, even if Akabane's equally sharp bargaining skills (and scalpels) prevented him from demanding half of the two million yen up front.

"I expect it delivered to me within three days, whole and undamaged. After delivery, and after a thorough inspection of the item, I will pay you the rest of the fee. The deal will be off if my conditions are not met."

"C'mon, don't we look trustworthy?" Ban volunteered a resisting tare-Ginji across the table. "Look, I don't even know why we're talking about this. We'll get you your laundry back, Akabane, with every goddamn stitch in place. The Get Backers accept the job!"

Akabane smiled thinly at the pair of retrieval agents. "Very well. I trust you will make it worth the price." The smile said many other things. _I'm no fool_ was one of them. _If you're fool enough to think I am, I won't hesitate to have myself a little fun with you (and the resulting pieces), hm?_ was another. It was that kind of smile.

It left the Get Backers frozen in their seats for a good while after Akabane had made his exit. It wasn't as dramatic with the white coat, but no-one would have dared to tell him that. Ginji, very slowly, making no sudden movements, turned to Ban.

"He knows, doesn't he, Ban-chan?"

"Idiot. Of course he doesn't know."

"How do _you_ know?"

"Because he came here to hire us to find it, not to slice us into little pieces."

"Oh. Okay." A thought suddenly occurred to Ginji. "Ban-chan, what if he _finds out_?"

"He won't. It'll be the easiest job we've ever had. We wait until tomorrow evening, pop over to his place with the damn coat, and get the rest of our money. If he asks where it came from, we'll remind him that it's unprofessional to pry for trade secrets." Ban's bark of a laugh was just short of manic. "I never thought he'd actually _hire_ us to get it back. We'll be living like kings!" He put an arm around Ginji's shoulders and started to steer him out of the Honky Tonk. "How about lunch, lightning punk?"

"Um, Ban-chan?"

"Yeah?"

"Where did you put the coat?"

"In the trunk of the Subaru. Why?"

"Ban-chan?"

"_What?_"'

"Where's the car?"

There was, indeed, no Subaru waiting patiently for them on the curb. What there was, however was a notice that it had been towed.

The world suddenly seemed a much darker place.

Ban's fist collided lethally with an innocent lamppost. "_Fuck_."

**End of Part 4**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Get Backers in any shape or form. And I do not profit from this in any way that involves currency. And I have to admit that the title is a rip-off of a story of Neil Gaiman's. Special thanks to Conrad J. Gaiser for the invention of the dryer sheet, paving the way for less static cling in our laundry.

**Part 5 – In Which Another Retriever is Hired**

_Meanwhile, in the laundry shop:_

The proprietor sat in the back room of the shop, unhappily contemplating life. He had ransacked the entire premises looking for the coat and hadn't even come up with a handful of black lint. He was shaken to the depths of his fabric softener-scented soul. The business had been passed to him from his father, and his grandfather before him, and never, never, never had any item of laundry been lost in their establishment. Not even a single sock. Ever.

There was no problem with replacing the coats. The shop earned enough to not be set back too much by that, and it was the honorable thing to do. But the mere fact that a coat had gone missing was unbearable.

And it would continue to be unbearable, like a persistent unreachable itch, unless he found a way to _get it back_.

_Ring_.

"Oh, hi, Hevn-san – "

"Gimme that! Yo, Hevn, guess what? We've got a job, and it's easy, and comes with a big fat paycheck _without_ your big fat cut! Did I mention that it was easy? Yeah. So thanks, but no thanks. Find some other sucker to do your dirty work. Miss your boobs though. Buh-bye."

_Click_.

"That wasn't very nice, Ban-chan."

"Seriously, Ginji, think a little. When _hasn't_ she given us a job that runs us through the saber-toothed, fire-breathing mill? _And_ asked us to pay her for it?"

"Come to think of it…"

"Told you so. Christ, just how many cars did they tow today? We've been here forever."

_Click_.

Hevn stood in dumb shock for a few seconds before lowering her phone. Ban hadn't given her time to say 'hi' let alone dish out a scathing retort to his tirade. There were days when she didn't know why she put up with him (aside, of course, from the fact that the Get Backers were the best retrieval team in Shinjuku and she always delivered her clients the very best service).

She counted to ten before dialing another number. The knowledge that her next choice of a retrieval agent would annoy Midou Ban to no end gave her a certain vindictive pleasure.

"Shido-kun?" Hevn smiled into the receiver. "I have a job for you."

An hour later, Fuyuki Shido was at the laundry shop, being regaled with the history of the business, and how the proprietor wanted to pass it on to his children with the name unsullied by the shame of having lost a customer's clothes. The Beast Master put in the appropriate non-committal remarks and nods (enough so as not to appear disinterested, but slight enough to – hopefully – not encourage more on the subject), while taking the opportunity to look for clues around the premises.

He wasn't really hoping to find a day-old scent, not with his human nose, and definitely not with all the chemical scents in the place (unless he was very much mistaken, someone had spilled quite a lot of bleach recently), but there were clues other than scent to rely on. Shido flipped through the clean clothes on the rack, sending up a crackle of static. That was strange. He was pretty sure that the use of dryer sheets would take care of that. He ran a hand over a freshly-laundered pile of towels with the same result. An excess build-up of electrical charge…

His eyes narrowed in suspicion. Ginji was the first person who came to mind, but he would never have done something like this. At least, he wouldn't have _on his own_.

"Did anything unusual happen yesterday?" he asked. "Any strange customers?"

The man looked uncomfortable. "Well. There was one – a girl, she seemed, um, very interested in having her laundry done, but she went away so quickly and didn't leave any laundry behind." He laughed nervously. "Though maybe you shouldn't pay that any mind. I'm starting to think that I fell asleep at the counter and dreamt it up."

There it was. The Evil Eye. Midou Ban couldn't have been any more unsubtle if he had painted the storefront with _BAN WAS HERE_ in bright, fluorescent red letters six feet high. Shido had to take a moment to take it in. While he was of the opinion that Ban had the mentality of a hell-bent five year old, he had a hard time believing that anyone would sink so low.

"Sir," he told the proprietor (who was a little taken aback by the hint of a growl in his voice), "you didn't lose the coat. It was stolen. And I know _exactly_ who has it."

**End of Part 5**


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